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Island law rules bacteria too

COMMUNITIES of bacteria living in the oil sumps of machinery follow the same ecological “law” that governs the diversity of animals on islands. It had been thought that microbial colonies did not follow such patterns.

In a group of islands of differing sizes, the bigger the island the more animal species will live there. Now researchers have found that this theory, called island biogeography, also holds for bacteria living in oil in the tanks of lathes and milling machines.

Christopher van der Gast and colleagues at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Oxford, UK, studied an “archipelago” of 15 …